April 29, 2014

April 29, 2014, a Tuesday, marks the beginning of the present-day narrative and the first urgent contact between Christian Habersaat and Carl Mørck. A telephone conversation and a brief email turn the date into the point at which Habersaat’s long-running case reaches Department Q.

Calendar Date and Narrative Placement

The chapter is dated Tuesday, April 29th, 2014. It follows a scene in which a woman, at the moment of death, remembers the car striking her, the sound of bones breaking, and the branches that caught her. The date heading then shifts the narrative to Carl, waking as Assad tells him the telephone is ringing again. The abrupt change moves from a remembered fatal collision to a new investigation beginning in the present.

Habersaat’s First Appeal

On April 29, Carl speaks by telephone with Christian Habersaat, a police sergeant from Bornholm. Habersaat asks whether Carl has time to hear him out and compliments Department Q on solving the complicated circus case at Bellahøj. He notes that the culprit died by suicide before trial. Carl is unmoved by that case and asks whether it is the reason for the call; Habersaat’s appeal concerns something else.

The Email and Its Consequence

Twenty minutes after Carl’s conversation with the Bornholm policeman, Rose asks whether he has spoken with Sergeant Habersaat. She has just received an email bearing Habersaat’s name. Its two sentences—“Department Q was my final hope. I can’t take any more.”—change the call’s weight: what had sounded like a request for a hearing now reads as a desperate appeal. The message brings the office’s mood down and makes April 29 the date Habersaat’s plea becomes an immediate concern for Department Q.